Editor’s Note: Following is the eulogy delivered by Alex Paul, former publisher of The New Era, at the March 17 memorial service for Pete Porter, who wrote for The New Era from 1978 to 1995 and is remembered well by many Sweet Home residents.
By Alex Paul
Good afternoon. My name is Alex Paul and I would like to say how honored and happy I was when Valerie Snider asked me to talk about my dear friend, Pete Porter.
Being so happy at a memorial service may seem a bit odd, but not if you knew Pete.
Next to his wedding day and the birth of his two children, this is the day Pete has looked forward to for years. He is with his Savior, Jesus Christ in heaven, his bride and his son, Johnny.
For as long as I have known Pete, he always said he was looking for the “Upper Taker” and not the “Under Taker.”
My family was blessed to know Pete for more than three decades and to have worked with him almost daily for 10 years.
Thirty-three years ago this month, my wife Debbie and I loaded our three young children and our dog into a Ryder moving truck and set out on a 2,000 mile adventure from St. Joseph, Mo. to Sweet Home.
It was a journey made by thousands of others who left the Midwest for the fertile Willamette Valley in search of a better life. But we traveled just four days instead of months.
We were following my dream of owning a community newspaper. We were about to purchase The New Era in Sweet Home from Dave and Sonia Cooper.
In addition to desks and cameras and typesetting equipment, little did we realize that our transaction included inheriting a man named Harley Frank “Pete” Porter.
That proved to be truly one of the great blessings in our lives.
For years Pete worked in lumber mills on the coast, but due to a brain injury, had to retrain at LBCC. In his second career, Pete became an award-winning and highly respected newspaper man.
He worked for the Coopers from 1978 until 1985 and 10 years with us. In all that time, we never had a cross word. Some people would say Debbie and I were Pete’s bosses, but the truth is, Pete had only two bosses: Ruth and the Good Lord Jesus.
Pete came to work early, stayed late and churned out thousands of stories about life in our small town. He wrote primarily sports stories, but also religion features and enough school news to fill a gymnasium with clippings.
His Pete’s Pot-Shots was a weekly staple and featured snippets about sporting events large and small. He could always find something good to say about a kid, even if he or she had a bad day on the court or baseball diamond.
He loved Sweet Home and Sweet Home loved Pete, so much so that they honored him with Pete Porter Day and gave him a letterman’s jacket that he wore proudly. After he retired, he was named Sportsman’s Holiday parade marshal.
Pete drove his little red Honda nearly 400,000 miles to and from Sweet Home until, one day, it finally died.
“Hey buddy,” he said popping his head into my office. “Look at this. I think it’s done.”
The large puddle of oil under the engine bay was a sign that Pete was right.
I don’t think most people in Sweet Home realized that Pete actually lived in Albany because he was always in our town except to sleep and attend church services in Albany.
He usually ate a couple pieces of toast for breakfast as he drove to work, but sometimes he ate at his desk while he studied his Bible.
I can still see him sitting back in his office chair, wearing a flannel shirt and sporting bright red socks while sucking on a toothpick and studying each page. He did the same thing at lunch and while waiting to go to a ballgame at night.
Pete was truly a committed Christian and yet, when he went to lunch, he sat at the end of the bar at one of Sweet Home’s grittier taverns and had a sandwich while drinking hot water. He was truly a man of the people and all sectors of the community loved and respected him. He treated everyone in town the same, whether they were poor or rich.
One icy morning his car slid across Highway 20 and struck a mailbox. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt and there was only minor damage to his car.
“You know buddy,” he said to me, “it all happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to pray.”
That was Pete Porter.
He loved his family, his job and his Lord in all things.
After interviewing someone – especially if he thought they might be hurting in some way – he would ask, “Is it OK if I pray with you?”
This seldom, if ever, happens at most newspapers.
And almost always, the person would say yes and Pete Porter, reporter, became Pete Porter the missionary.
When Deb and I purchased the paper, I was 30 and she was just 26. Our children were just 7, 5, and 4.
I had been working in the newspaper business since I was 17 and had quit a really good job with one of the world’s largest advertising agencies to tackle my dream of newspaper ownership.
We had $68 left after we moved, gave the Coopers our down payment and transferred utilities and such into our names. We didn’t know a soul in Sweet Home and went from having money in the bank to being broke.
We never dreamed we could fail, but we were terrified.
It was tough, really tough those first few years and without Pete Porter standing by our sides, we likely would not have made it.
If we were in the building, he was in the building and that often meant 12- to 16-hour days. There were times we all would lie down on the cold concrete floor at midnight to catch a couple hours sleep and get up and hit it again.
After a while, things smoothed out and I started making Pete take Wednesday afternoons off. He would go to his Rotary Club meeting and then head home.
It may have been the only time we nearly had cross words. He didn’t want to take a half-day off, but I told him I would pull the plug on his computer if he didn’t.
And speaking of computers, Pete was thrown into the world of desktop publishing just one year after we purchased the paper. Our old typesetting equipment had given up the ghost and we became the second newspaper in the state to set up a desktop publishing system with MacIntosh computers.
The transition definitely was not easy, but as usual, Pete took to it with an open mind, although quite often I would hear him cry out in a loud voice, “Oh, no!”
He would have been typing for an hour or two and had forgotten to hit the save key.
He would have to start all over again.
We also encouraged Pete to share his Christian faith through a weekly column called “A Time of Refreshing.” Over the years, we published several hundred of those columns and it was something in which he took a lot of pride.
It was a sad day for us and all of Sweet Home when Pete retired in 1995, but it was so very well deserved. He finally had time to travel with Ruth and they made several trips together.
Normally, today’s service would be a time of sadness and I am sure it is for Valerie and her family.
But having known Pete Porter for so long and having witnessed first-hand his unwavering commitment to Jesus Christ on a daily basis, I know this is really a joyous day.
It is a celebration that should include fireworks. It is something Pete has looked forward to for a long time.
Pete Porter ran the good race.
He was a good and faithful servant every single day and now he is with his bride Ruth and son Johnny enjoying his eternal reward in Heaven.
He touched so many people in Sweet Home through his reporting and so many more across Linn County – especially at his church – through his faith and his reporting.
I can say this without hesitation, in addition to my dad, Frank, and my Uncle Tony, Pete Porter was one of the finest men I have ever known.
Although our family will always miss him, we know that he has already stood before God and heard, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’
God bless our friend Pete Porter.